Horrifying moment skier plummets from chairlift as harsh winds batter ski resort
Terrified skiers feared for their lives as they were thrashed around by brutal 70mph winds while trapped in a gondola.
Shocking footage shows brutal winds blowing through dangling lifts with vulnerable holidaymakers on board at the Cervino ski resort.
A chair is seen swing wildly before a helpless skier either falls or drops down into the ground.
One skier told MailOnline she was stuck on the lift for 40 minutes with her friend.
Stephanie Burt said she saw another skier fall screaming from the lift 30ft above the ground and a gondola opposite almost collided with theirs.
The lifelong skier told the outlet: ‘We spent 40 minutes holding on for our lives, listening to and there’s been no communication, and nobody has checked if we’re doing okay.
‘We were traumatised. I was in shock. And they think that our lives were not at risk. It’s insane.’
Bosses at the Breuil-Cervinia resort near Matterhorn peak allegedly tried to downplay the danger the skiers were which angered the mother-of-two, MailOnline reports.
Just five minutes into their lift journey and not far away from reaching the top, the lifts shut down.
The lifts’ wind tolerance of 43mph had been far exceeded.
Burt and her friend Barnaby Dunning were left high up in the air at the mercy of the wind along with another skier.
She said: ‘Our bottoms were off of the seats, we were holding onto the front bubble and literally swinging in midair,’ she recalled.
‘The only reason I’m alive is because I was there with Barnaby, who weighs 100kg and could hold it down. At one stage, my ski was up over my shoulder.’
However, the solo skier in the lift behind them was not so lucky.
Plastic bubble had been blown open by the wind and it was acting ‘like a sail’, making the chair swing even more, she told MailOnline.
The man’s screams were ‘harrowing’ before he fell to the snowy ground, she recalled.
‘It sounded like he was falling to his death. The fear of God was put into me in that lift. It was the most frightening experience of my life’, she added.
At one point, Burt thought she might never see her husband and children again.
She recalled the horror: ‘The chair on the left was swinging an inch from us, so I thought about jumping, I thought about it three times’.
‘We thought we were going to be knocked off and killed, and discussed if it would be better to have broken legs or a broken pelvis and be alive (from jumping off) rather than being knocked off.
‘I remember thinking to myself: “I’ve just got to hold on”. I thought about my children, my husband. Barney said: “Don’t jump”.’
Eventually, the pair were able to dismount at the summit.
But there was no lift operator at the summit, she claimed.
The friends had to pull themselves together once more and ski back down despite the shock.
Once safely back down, she demanded to meet with ski resort president Federico Maquignaz and chief engineer Mauro Joyeusaz.
However, she was left feeling her concerns were not taken seriously and they sought to ‘wipe their hands of it’, she told the outlet.
She said if her nine-year-old had been on the lift or if she had been alone they would have died, adding that she will ‘never ski in Italy again’.
A spokesperson for the Cervino resort told MailOnline that Maquignaz and Joyeusaz could not be contacted because of the Easter holiday.
Cervino S.p.A previously told other media outlets, including BBC News, that all passengers had ‘all reached their destination safely’.
Holidaymakers took to social media to share videos of the ordeal on Thursday.
A teacher from the UK posted a video on X (former Twitter), showing the halted lifts get blown around like leaves.
He said the lifts were closed just before he got on, while a ‘few people are stuck on the lifts and some clearly damaged by huge gusts’.
A person seen jumping or falling down a chair ‘has been air lifted to hospital but was seen walking with ski patrol’, he said on X.
The lifts were back open the following day but 10 chairs were damaged and removed, he added.
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